Academy Awards Ceremony Overhaul Won’t Fix Problems

The Academy of Motion Picture Sciences is well aware of the problems it faces in getting people to watch the Oscars telecast Sunday night. Last year’s slit-your-throat Oscars honored movies about dying of Alzheimer’s (The Father), a Black Panther slaying (Judas and the Black Messiah), toxic masculinity (Promising Young Woman), and a life of rootless poverty (Nomadland). The relative crowd-pleaser was a no-star movie about Korean immigrants trying and mostly failing to grow vegetables. Click, said America. Ninety-seven percent of us didn’t watch, and for the third time in four years, the ratings hit a new record low: the previously unthinkable sub-basement level of 10.4 million viewers.

The audience doesn’t care about the movies, it doesn’t care about the hosting (shared last year by a number of B-listers, though the ceremony was billed as “hostless”), and it shrugs at the hype.

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Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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The Academy of Motion Picture Sciences is well aware of the problems it faces in getting people to watch the Oscars telecast Sunday night. Last year’s slit-your-throat Oscars honored movies about dying of Alzheimer’s (The Father), a Black Panther slaying (Judas and the Black Messiah), toxic masculinity (Promising Young Woman), and a life of rootless poverty (Nomadland). The relative crowd-pleaser was a no-star movie about Korean immigrants trying and mostly failing to grow vegetables. Click, said America. Ninety-seven percent of us didn’t watch, and for the third time in four years, the ratings hit a new record low: the previously unthinkable sub-basement level of 10.4 million viewers.

The audience doesn’t care about the movies, it doesn’t care about the hosting (shared last year by a number of B-listers, though the ceremony was billed as “hostless”), and it shrugs at the hype.